


The Firestorm Wives' Club

by Sholio



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Female Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-15 00:05:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9211121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Sometimes you need to talk to someone who understands. Set in season one after 1x14.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hellkitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/gifts).



Caitlin leaned away from her microscope and stretched, popping her back. Her gaze drifted to the time readout in the corner of the big screen above the lab table, for the fourth time in the last half hour. Twenty minutes to noon ... that was a good time to leave, right? She might be a little early, but nothing was on fire, nobody was attacking the city, and traffic downtown could be murder.

She snatched up her purse and jacket, and made a break for it -- but of course Cisco picked that moment to come back from his workshop with something in his hands that was trailing wires and glowing faintly and probably explosive. They did a hasty little shuffle around each other in the doorway of the Cortex.

"Where are _you_ going?" Cisco wanted to know. "I didn't hear a metahuman alert, and you still have plenty of pizza pockets in your secret stash ... which ... I obviously know nothing about."

"No metahumans, no pizza-pocket emergencies -- and I told you to stay away from those. If you must know," she said loftily, slipping her arms into her jacket sleeves, "I'm meeting a friend for lunch."

"You have a _date?"_ Cisco's eyes narrowed. "Ronnie's back in town and you didn't tell me? Wait -- did you and Ronnie break up?"

She poked him in the shoulder. "No and no. It's not _that_ kind of a friend. It's just a friend friend. A casual lunch date with a friend. I'm sure you've heard of that kind of thing."

"Yeah, I've heard of it." Rubbing his shoulder, Cisco still looked suspicious. "But I'm trying to remember the last time you left the lab during the daytime when it wasn't for an emergency or to meet me or Barry somewhere."

"I _do_ have a life, you know."

"Since when?"

"Since ... now. And -- I'm going to be late! Bye!" She darted off, though she knew she'd be in for more quizzing when she got back.

It wasn't like she had anything to hide.

It was just ... embarrassing. She was twenty-eight years old, she had degrees in medicine and biochemistry -- and all her friends consisted of guys she worked with. Who numbered exactly two. (Unless she counted Dr. Wells, but she wasn't sure if _friend_ was quite the right word; she admired him, respected him, but it wasn't as if she could grab a spontaneous drink with him or talk to him about her love life.)

In any case, this lack-of-a-social-life situation was changing as of _right now._

***

The restaurant was a lunch place in the new shopping district downtown. Caitlin had never been there; she wasn't even sure if it had been open yet when she and Ronnie had been dating. But it had four and a half stars on the review sites when she'd looked it up, so she figured it was worth a try.

It was half empty, so she spotted Clarissa easily, just as the older woman waved to her. Clarissa rose as Caitlin approached, and to her surprise, gave her a quick hug.

"This was a wonderful idea, dear. I'm glad you suggested it."

"I'm surprised I suggested it," Caitlin admitted with a sheepish laugh as she took a seat. "I have to admit, I don't get out much."

Clarissa smiled and reached for her cup of tea. "Nor do I. Martin and I had long since settled into that sort of stasis that couples often do. All our friends were other couples we knew from his work or mine, and we spent most evenings at home anyway. And then ..." She took a breath, and wrapped her hands around her tea cup.

"And then he was gone," Caitlin said gently, "and you realized that your entire social life revolved around him. At least, that's what happened to me with Ronnie."

"It sounds rather sad when you put it that way, doesn't it? And yet it never made me unhappy. An evening of doing crosswords while Martin worked on his laptop at the other end of the couch was more satisfying than I ever could have dreamed when I was ... well, your age."

"I used to have people tell me I was twenty going on forty-five," Caitlin admitted, studying her menu; it was easier to talk about this sort of thing without making eye contact. "My work has always been my life. I think Ronnie was the first person who really made me feel young ..." She had to break off as the conversation ran off course into deep emotional waters, and looked up a little desperately. "Do you recommend anything, Mrs. Stein?"

"It's Clarissa, please, and --" She smiled. "I've never been here before. I was going to ask you."

"Oh. Right."

The absurdity of it made her dissolve into a grin, and across the table, Clarissa cracked up too. For a minute they just grinned at each other, and then Clarissa reached across the table and squeezed her hand.

"It's just so nice to be able to talk to someone who understands. Someone who can sympathize with what I'm going through. My family and friends are trying to be supportive, but since I can't tell them what happened to Martin ... it's hard."

The thought had never occurred to Caitlin that, as difficult as the situation with Ronnie had been, she had something that Clarissa didn't: friends who knew the truth. And even though she'd had to deal with grief at what she believed was her fiancé's death, Clarissa had been struggling with even more uncertainty; she'd only known that her husband had vanished, and even now that he'd reappeared, all she could do was try to explain it away in some fashion that didn't make Dr. Stein sound like a cad who had abandoned her.

Caitlin had never realized that her loss of Ronnie could have been even worse.

But even with her friends' support, as much as she appreciated it, she'd still felt alone. In all the world, there was only one person who could really understand what she was going through, and that was the woman sitting across from her.

"I'm sorry," Clarissa said, as Caitlin's thoughts neared the end of that particular track. "I don't meant to ramble."

"Please don't apologize. It's nice to know I'm not the only one." Caitlin smiled, a little shyly. "It's odd to think we have _that_ in common, and yet, I hardly know a thing about you."

"Nor I you. In that case," Clarissa said, drawing herself together, "as much as it means to have someone to commiserate with, let's not sit here and mope. Tell me about yourself. What is it like, working at STAR Labs? What do you do?"

"Oh. Uh." Caitlin found herself automatically scrambling to come up with a non-metahuman-related terms -- but no, she didn't have to, did she? Clarissa had watched Dr. Stein merge with Ronnie and fly away. They really _could_ talk about it, at least in general terms. "Uh, I'm the team's medical support and I do the biochem stuff."

"That sounds exciting."

She couldn't help laughing. "I don't think I've ever heard anyone call biochemistry exciting before, but it really is. The whole job is. Let me tell you about the time we had to deal with a rogue boomerang in the lab ..."

The lunch hour vanished quickly, along with an excellent swiss-turkey wrap, and when Caitlin looked up at the clock on the wall, she was startled to find she was already a half-hour later than she'd planned on getting back to STAR Labs. And somehow miraculously uninterrupted by a text about Barry being attacked by mutant wombats or someone developing a way to kill people with weaponized Pokémon; would wonders never cease.

Clarissa waved off her attempt to pay half the check. "You can get the next one. Tuesday, perhaps? Same time?"

And Caitlin broke into a grin -- an expression that came much more easily to her these days. "I'd love to."


End file.
